


Your Memory Will Carry On

by hajimebassaidai



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Angst, Drama, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-25
Updated: 2012-03-25
Packaged: 2017-11-02 11:52:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 536
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/368713
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hajimebassaidai/pseuds/hajimebassaidai
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She owed it to him, to herself and to the expedition to stay strong.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Your Memory Will Carry On

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings: Spoilers for first 2 Seasons
> 
> Con crit for an inexperienced writer/publisher would be greatly appreciated!
> 
> Disclaimer: In no way, shape or form do I own Stargate Atlantis.  
> Neither is anything to do with My Chemical Romance mine.  
> I own only my own warped imagination. ;-)

“We'll carry on  
And though you dead and gone believe me  
Your memory will carry on”

Welcome to the Black Parade  
My Chemical Romance

_________________________________________________________________________________________________

 

**Your Memory Will Carry On**

 

She turned left out of her quarters, feeling feet settling into the familiar rhythm, pounding through the corridors of Atlantis. As always she headed for the outer towers away from the ever present bustle of people. Away from the gaze of the curious.

Away from the whispers.

She often cursed the creeping lack of focus that tried to haunt her now. Maybe a remnant of before? But now, alone, she could examine her thoughts, let her mind drift. Heightmeyer would probably approve, assign it a step on some kind of process of what? Acceptance? Grief?

Who could ever have assigned a process, a routine for what had happened?

They'd had to literally make it up as they went along. What other options were there? She'd avoided the Memorial Service. How could she go? The “elephant in the room” didn't even remotely cover it. Only in Mark Twain novels and bad soap operas do the dead attend their own funerals.

Then there was afterwards.

She could only return to Earth if she went where no one would approach her with recognition in their eyes. She could never take her place amongst her friends and family again.

So she stayed. 

Lt Col Sheppard had made it clear that her position was still there for her though he couldn't quite look her steadily in the eye. But the effort he'd made for her...keeping her a place, a duty, giving her a purpose still.

Sheppard still spoke to her as he always had, relaxed and casual in his command. But sometimes she caught the tail end of a shadow flit across his face before the free and easy mask returned.

So she stayed in the only place where this could seem vaguely normal. Out here in Atlantis.

As she reached the last mile she realised that she'd re-evaluated every single little thing about herself these last three months. 

Was it already three months? 

From her galaxy to her job to her name.

In the end her decision to stay really came down to an act of respect, of acknowledgment and of a wish to continue protecting the expedition he'd risked so much for so often. As a most unlikely saviour. 

So she stayed to continue protecting it as he no longer could because of her. To do her best to protect those who had suffered from his loss, in his memory. She offered her life, her skills, altered her identity, even bastardised her name. Took his first name for her own.

And tried to make the best of the situation.

But even now, as she re-entered her quarters, it was hard to look in the mirror, to see what she'd become. She owed it to him, to herself and to the expedition to stay strong.

She stepped in front of the bathroom mirror to look at herself without hesitation as so few others would.

And so the person formerly known as Laura Cadman steadily met the gaze of the blue eyes which had once belonged to Meredith Rodney McKay.


End file.
